New Year New You: Learning to Begin Again
In order to understand the dharma, the teachings of the Buddha, we have to begin at the beginning. We have to work step by step, stitch by stitch--and the way to begin at the beginning is with...the "path of individual salvation."
-Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, The Path of Individual Liberation
As 2025 comes to a close, a bright, shiny optomistic (naive?) 2026 awaits. This time of the year tends to bring deep reflections as well as intention setting for the newness to come. I often find myself asking a lot of questions about what has worked well and what maybe needs to go differently in terms of social, career, and financial goals, among others.
From the Buddhist perspective, beginning again, is at the root of how we work with our minds, our basic situation, moment to moment. The notion mentioned above as the "path of individual salvation" is describing how we go about beginning to feel our experience more fully, more deeply, and the supposed freedom that might come from that.
In the context of a new year, I know there are habits that serve me well and some that don't quite cut it. Going to bed at a reasonable hour and eating more vegetables for example, have been great new habits in my world. But listening to music / dancing around instead of cleaning my house more regularly is an area of growth.
However our areas of strength and growth might currently be showing up, there is, says the Buddha, a constant opportunity to feel our experience, and begin again, with a sense of freshness in the situation.
Let's ground this in the context of a tool we can use: sitting meditation. At this point most people have heard the benefits of meditation in a speed-first-feel-later culture, and have probably tried it here and there. Here is one style of meditation you might try, as given to me by my teachers.
First, as you take a seat, notice the feeling of your body. Just feel your body in the space. This is a recognition of what is here, no judgement, no praise, just being with the form we have to carry us.
Then, take note of two posture elements: a relatively straight spine, and knees below your hips. You can sit on a cushion or a chair. Next, consider your intention for this practice as one that includes everything. This point deserves some emphasis. No matter what comes up in our mind-body, it is a fundamental part of our current reality and deserves our care & acknowledgement. This style of meditation is simply an invitation to feel our experience as it is. No thought or sensation is off limits.
The last bit I would add to the practice is a focus on the out breath. Let the body breathe in as you rest, there is a gap, and then as you breathe out notice the breathing out into space. Continue like that.
As sure as 2025 turns to 2026, our mind will become distracted by a thought or sensation and we will suddenly be in Paris, or in the year 2014, or perhaps both. But the good news is, we can begin again.
Over and over you come back to your posture, breathe out, and come back again. It is quite hard work.
- Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, The Path of Individual Liberartion
Now let's give this whole idea a bit of color. When we talk about meditation, and starting over, there is a sense that is is very serious business, or maybe that a good boy or girl would remember to do this often and with vigor.
Those things might be true in a sense, but also, this quality of feeling our experience with a specific intention on coming back to ourselves again and again is actually available in a variety of contexts.
We can extrapolate that quality out to every aspect of our lives and realize the ways in which we can begin again in our moment to moment experience in all kinds of situations.
In the middle of becoming mildly infuriated at a colleague, we can breathe deeply, feel our mind-body, and begin again. When you're in the middle of cleaning up your new year's eve party mess when your roommate decides to skip town and leave all the dishes and solo cups to you to sort out, we can feel what is happening in our experience, and begin again.
In the midst of having the same argument with a loved one for the 2026th time, we can notice we are breathing, feel the breathe expand from our body to the space around us, and as it goes out, we can begin and the beginning.
This sense of sitting meditation can be, for lack of a better word, boring. But expanded out into the totality of our human experience, we can realize that we are never not working with our minds. Practicing bringing mindfulness-awareness to out situation is like the secret stuff Bugs Bunny drank in the locker room of the movie Space Jam. We get to carry this space bringing, life expanding innate quality of being with us everywhere we go. If you've seen the movie, you also know that the secret stuff was really just water which works great as reminder that when we feel our experience more deeply, begin again, and find ourselves more present, we are not creating anything, but allowing our inherent nature to shine through more fully.
This is another dated metaphor, but noticing our out breath and starting over is almost like the kids from Captain Planet. They each had an elemental ring, that when called upon together, Captain Planet would emerge to save the day. The kids are like the basic situations we find ourselves in, the rings are like our practice, and Captain Planet is the fruit of our practice, the result or fruition. No matter what situation the kids find themselves in, its possible to call upon Captain Planet. It is possible to start over, to allow mindfulness-awareness to come forward.
We have to accept that all experiences are just thought patterns. Buddha said that when a musician plays a stringed instrument, both the strings and his fingers are his mind.
- Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, The Path of Individual Liberation
For me, when I reflect on thoughts of "new year, new me," this sense of bringing awareness to whatever might come my way feels super valuable. So I know both that I can (1) begin again in any situation in which I am breathing, and (2) every time I begin again it is like calling upon Michael's secret stuff or Captain Planet himself.
There's one more beautiful tool I'd like to share in the conversation about beginning again with intention: touch and go. In this way of practicing, we touch into our felt experience fully, totally immersing ourselves in the situation no holding back, and then we let go. This can work as a useful way as we enter a moment of newness, to actually embody that quality of allowing for freshness to enter our system. Here is my teacher's description:
Touch is the sense of existence, that you are who you are. You have a certain name and you feel a certain way when you sit on the cushion. You feel that you actually exist...That is the touch part. The go part is that you do not hang on to that. You do not sustain your sense of being, but you let go of it.
-Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, The Path of Individual Liberation
In other words, when thinking about how we might show up in 2026, we can benefit both from (1) touching our experience as it is right now, and from that place of feeling/sensing/seeing, (2) let go into the open space of a year full of possibilities.
Many blessings in the new year.
Source: New Year New You: Learning to Begin Again
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